


After the Breach

by russian_blue



Series: Missing Spokes on the Conversational Wheel [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Arguing, Dreaming, F/M, Post-Canon, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russian_blue/pseuds/russian_blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her dreams, she says all the things she can't say when she's awake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Breach

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Trespasser.
> 
> Fifth in a series of headcanon scenes based on narrative/conversational options I would have taken if Bioware had written them into the game.

If there's one thing that drives Verai mad --

\-- no. That thought is already headed in the wrong direction. _One_ thing that drives her mad? She's lost count of how many there are. If she were still the Inquisitor, it would require a full-time clerk to list them all. She's glad she disbanded the Inquisition; not only does it mean fewer threats to her sanity, but it also means she can just say "fuck it" to some of the ones that remain.

But the particular thing that drives her mad, on scattered nights across the months that follow the conclave at the Winter Palace, is that she doesn't know whether the dreams are real.

If she said that to him during one of them, what answer would she get? Some lecture about how dreams are as real as the waking world, probably. He wouldn't give her a straight answer, not when she's trying to find one of these so-called Dreamer mages to help her. If she knew for certain that he was really there, she could use that against him. If it's just a demon pretending to be him, it would say whatever would confuse and irritate her the most. And if it's just her own mind, making up stories . . .

. . . then she doesn't know what she would want him to say. That he's real, or that he isn't.

It happens again and again, though. Not on any schedule she can map out, though she's tried. Not according to the moon phase or where she is or whether she got drunk that night or not. It's just that some nights, she goes to sleep, and argues with Solas in her dreams.

Verai has no clue what she'll say to him if she ever manages to find him in person. She'll be half-paralyzed, wondering whether she needs to repeat all the things she's said in her dreams, or whether he knows them already. As for him . . . who knows what he'll do.

Once upon a time, she would have said "gods know." Not anymore.

One god knows, after a fashion. Except that Solas isn't really a god, any more than the rest of them were. And Verai takes some comfort in the notion that maybe he's just as torn as she is, just as uncertain what he should do where she's concerned. After all, he could have killed her that day, or let the Anchor do it. He let her live. He kissed her and called her his love and damn his eyes, it would have been easier if he hadn't. 

So now she yells at him in her dreams, because she can't do it in person. She spews all her vitriol about the Evanuris -- he's a weirdly sympathetic audience for that, the Dread Wolf, the one who destroyed the world trying to get rid of them. He won't talk about them much, though, and maybe that's proof that she's imagining him or maybe it just means he doesn't want to let slip anything she might use to stop him. She tells him they're hunting him, feeds him misinformation, except he'll be expecting her to feed him misinformation so sometimes she says true things and sometimes those are just disposable traps that never manage to catch him, and there are disadvantages to having Leliana on your side, because that kind of twisty thinking is one of the other things that drive Verai mad.

She never tries to kiss him, and he never tries to kiss her. Proof that it isn't just her own wishful dreaming?

Maybe, maybe not.

And then one night she says the thing she's had to work up her nerve to voice, even in her dreams.

"You might as well admit the truth."

Solas looks faintly amused. At times like this, she can see the Dread Wolf in him: Fen'harel, the trickster of so much distorted legend. "I thought I had," he says. "Unless you mean that I should tell you where I am and what I'm doing. You know that isn't possible."

Some nights she gives in to the banter, because she misses it so badly. Not tonight. "You should just admit you don't give a damn about the People."

He barely moves, but somehow his entire demeanor changes. The amusement is gone. He's Fen'harel like this, too, the creature the Dalish fear, the one they try to appease so he won't turn that look on them. "Everything I have done --"

"Is for us, right. You've said it before. But it's a lie, even if you won't admit it to yourself." She's rehearsed the words a thousand times, holding a thousand permutations of this argument in her own head, when she's awake, when she's sure no one can hear them but herself. "What do you think will happen, Solas? If you tear the Veil down? When you created it, you didn't foresee the consequences; fine, I believe that. But now?"

It comes spilling out of her in a torrent, too fast for him to get a word in edgewise. " _We aren't ready for it._ Forget the humans for now, the dwarves, the qunari, even though they deserve to live, too -- you don't care what will happen to them, you're doing this for the People. But we aren't who we used to be. You've made that more than clear. And who we are now? Can't survive what you want to do."

She can see it in her mind's eye, and so the dream shapes itself around them. A chaos of demons and spirits, and everywhere she looks, elves dying. Because none of them remember a world without the Veil, and not even their Keepers are prepared to live with what's on the other side.

Her voice carries through the screams. "If you wanted to help the elves, you would do something about our suffering _now_. But you tore apart Briala's network, which could have accomplished something useful. You ignore the enslavement, the poverty, the People starving in Fereldan alienages --"

"Symptoms," he says. "I want to treat the disease."

"With a slow arrow, after the beast has had its rampage. How many will die, Solas? How many of the People will you annihilate, in order to 'free' the few who manage to survive the hell you're going to create?" She draws herself upright. She can't match the look he had a moment ago, the cold, predatory anger, but her own burns hot in reply. "Admit the truth. To me, and to yourself. You aren't doing this for the People. You're doing this for your real people: the spirits. They're the only ones who will benefit, in the world you want to create."

"You don't remember," he says. There's a new note in his voice -- pleading with her to understand. "You have no idea what we lost when I made the Veil. Yes, initially it will be chaos; I can't avoid that. But afterward, we'll find the balance we lost." He shakes his head, mouth twisting in bitterness. "The balance I destroyed. So long as the Veil persists, we'll never have any balance at all. Do you think this is better? The world we have right now?"

She wants to get up in his face, plant her hand on his chest and shove him back with all her strength. Anything to vent the tension in her body. But she's afraid of what will happen if she does. "I think you haven't bothered to try and fix anything. I don't accept that we have only two choices, leave the world the way it is or burn the whole thing down. But you aren't even willing to _look_ for a third option."

The smile is back, faint. This time it's sad, too. "That's what I have you for."

She won't let him see the way her gut twists at that. And maybe it's a desire to make him hurt a little inside, too, that makes her say, "For now."

Solas goes very still. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that I'm as mortal as anybody else. The Inquisition may be gone, but my enemies aren't. Some of those enemies are _your_ agents. And just remember, Solas: if I survive all that, and you succeed in tearing the Veil down . . . I'm one of the ones who will die."

He laughs quietly, though he doesn't sound amused. "I've seen you in the Fade, after Adamant. You'll do just fine."

"No. Because I won't hold back, Solas; I'll throw myself onto the front lines to keep other people alive. I will be their shield, giving my life to save as many others as I can. Not just elves, either, but humans, qunari, dwarves -- everybody. They all deserve to live." Her smile is the same one she wore for so many years during the Inquisition, a fierce display of teeth that doesn't say anything good about her mood. "I won't be the first casualty, Solas. But when your new world is complete, you'll find me on the lists of the dead."

He's changed since they met in Haven, growing once more into the man he was in ancient days. He doesn't show pain as clearly as he used to. She's succeeded in her aim, though: she's hurt him. Did he imagine the two of them would live happily ever after in a world without a Veil? No, because he couldn't possibly think she would forgive him for that. But he expected to rest content in the knowledge that she was out there somewhere, making a new life for herself.

"Tell me," she says. "When I die, in that world. What will happen to my soul?"

He doesn't answer that. Because he doesn't know? Doesn't want her to know? Doesn't really exist, because he isn't the real Solas, he's just something her sleeping brain made up?

All he says is, "If there is another way, I . . . I'm not the one to find it. I _want_ you to search, _ma vhenan_. Not for me, but for a way to fix the world without destroying it again. And if you find it . . . ."

He approaches her. One part of Verai wants to shy back; the other wants to step forward and take him in her arms, like she used to do. But she can't do that, because too much has changed between them, and even in the Fade her left arm still ends in a stump. Instead she holds rigidly still until he's there, standing before her, with something in his hand.

A carving of a little wolf.

"Use this," he says. "When you have your answer. Use it, and I will come. And I will listen."

Listen. Not accept. She'll still have to convince him, and that won't be easy.

Still, it's something.

She doesn't ask how much time she'll have. She just takes the carving, and doesn't kiss him, and the dream slowly dissolves around her, until she sits up in bed and feels something hard tucked into her remaining hand. The little wolf.

"So," she murmurs, curling her fingers around it. "Real."

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is partly the finale to my headcanon of my Inquisitor's evolving feelings about elven history and culture, and partly an outgrowth of a different fic I didn't end up writing: one where Briala teamed up with Solas to help out the elves of Thedas. It really annoyed me that Inquisition so thoroughly whiffed half the dangling plotlines from _The Masked Empire_ (e.g. Michel de Chevin and Imshael), Briala's control of the eluvians and plans for elven insurrection chief among them. It's like, nevermind, Solas took the whole thing over while you weren't looking, the end.
> 
> But as I pondered that fic idea, I found myself thinking that Solas isn't (as far as we know) doing a damned thing to better the lives of elves right now, and what he intends to do would logically result in widespread destruction for _everybody_ \-- elves included. So the Briala team-up turned into this instead, my Inquisitor accusing Solas of caring about spirits more than he does about elves.
> 
> I hope it isn't true. I have my fingers crossed that in DA4 he won't just become Anders 2.0, that Bioware won't tell _two_ stories of how trying to help the oppressed turns you into a mass-murdering terrorist. This fic is me hoping for an alternative: a setup where Solas would accept a better alternative if somebody offered one. We'll have to wait and see.


End file.
